Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Marc Smith: Social dimension of social media

This is a lecture by Marc Smith; I believe about 6-7 months ago. Delivered with commanding knowledge and the always colorful style that distinguishes him.A few points to highlight:

•3 ½ minutes into it; the notion of relationship & social media

•9 ½ minutes into it His take at given Social Media a Sociology Acceptable name: “Collective Goods produced through Computer Mediated Collective Action”; clearly the name will never stick.. however thinking about it that way helps better understand AND implement it. To understand the potential of the “computer mediated” you need to check the last few minutes (around minute 40)

•14 minutes into it he talks about the key difference between the one to one media (mail, 1:1 sms message) versus small/large groups creating media for small/large groups (i.e. Wikipedia is mostly a set of small groups creating media for large groups). About 24 minutes into it he re-visits Wikipedia & the “wisdom of the Chaperones”

•25 minutes into it he goes into his signature points: the visualization of Social Media holistically and discovery of behavior patterns. If you want the summary of it ff to minute 34.

•31 minutes into it he addresses the Caldwell versus Duncan influencer discussion.